ANOHNI pens beautiful essay on why she won’t attend the Oscars

ANOHNI’s ‘Manta Ray’, a collaboration with J. Ralph from the ecological destruction documentary Racing Extinction, was nominated for a 2016 Academy Award for Best Song, but the duo were not invited to perform with the rest of the nominees due to “time constraints.” Despite this, Dave Grohl and others have been invited to perform a David Bowie tribute.

In an essay for Pitchfork, the singer addresses why, despite the honor and the exposure of the red carpet, she will not attend the ceremony:

“Everyone told me that I still ought to attend, that a walk down the red carpet would still be ‘good for my career.’

Last night I tried to force myself to get on the plane to fly to L.A. for all the nominee events, but the feelings of embarrassment and anger knocked me back, and I couldn’t get on the plane. I imagined how it would feel for me to sit amongst all those Hollywood stars, some of the brave ones approaching me with sad faces and condolences. There I was, feeling a sting of shame that reminded me of America’s earliest affirmations of my inadequacy as a transperson. I turned around at the airport and went back home.

As if to rub salt into the wound, the next morning the Oscars added that I was transgendered to the trivia page of their website.

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In the United States it is all about money: those who have it and those who don’t. Identity politics are often used as a smokescreen to distract us from this viral culture of wealth extraction. When we are not extracting wealth from nature, we are extracting it from the working and middle classes.